It has been an exceptionally hot summer, dry, an extreme high-pressure system stuck, looming over our parched Nordic soils. I found it tough. Working in July, walking through the oak groves around university, seeing trees start to drop their leaves. Hearing news about the largest forest fires in Swedish recorded history, crops failing, animals having to be sent to slaughter due to lack of fodder.
That smell of dry grass, parched soils. It is subtle, easily missed. Like a light tickle. Among the acacias and baobabs of northern Burkina Faso, that smell is lovely. In the early morning sun, like a poem.
In Stockholm, though, the same smell just makes me want to cry. It is wrong. It aches and itches in its subtlety.
Helplessness, thinking of the release party of a Swedish literary magazine that I attended in June, themed “Climate Rage”. Jonas Gren, a poet, journalist and friend, saying: We need to explore what it means to live, act, feel, be in the age of humans. But how do you do that without drowning, Jonas, how?
(Not with science. No. Figures and logic and theory-building, it will not make you float. Definitely not with science.)
When my holiday finally started, my way of dealing with angst: the yearly library run. That childish happiness of holding an unread book in my hand, the potential for magic, strange worlds unfolding. At least I can still feel that.
(… maybe there I can find a key.)
Katja Malmborg 